Found this Curve-billed Thrasher guarding the flock today at 10:44 AM. Never took him to PS, opened JPG in ACDsee Photo Manager 10, saved it as a PSD, cropped, and saved that as a file for printing, then resized at 800 px largest side as JPG for BP . . . "That's all folks"
Gus
Olympus E-510 IS, Zuiko 70-300mm 1: 4 -5.6 ED, (140-600 mm equiv)
Aperture Priority
F 5.6
1/500s
ISO 100
0.00 EV
530 mm
Auto WB
Fill flash TTL intensity -0.7
Last edited by Gus Hallgren; 02-10-2008 at 07:46 PM.
nice one gus, beautiful bird with great detail. only unattractive feature is the black streak that leads to his head. other than that, it looks awesome.
Removing the dark line really helps Gus. Very nice image. You mention you opened the jpg...
Do you make your images as jpgs in camera or are you using raw? I'd suggest you seriously consider using raw. Your work is rapidly getting up to par and you'll get back the 50% of the dynamic range data you are losing by shooting as jpg (12 bit vs. 8 bit)
.
It does make larger image files and does require a little more work in post processing, but not much. I think your images deserve the extra quality!
y vote for the repost, although it looks a little lighter, did you work on a jpg? Because if you did, every time you save it, it looses information. Better to convert to TIFF or PSD.
Very nice despite the harsh light, by the way :)
Thanks Richard,
Appreciate your always positive comments ~ I didn't remove the black band, #2 is a different photo with a slightly different head position, and IMO, not quit as fierce in his eyes.
I like your Shovelers . . Well done!
I quite often shoot RAW & JPG together, but end up using the JPG's because of lack of know how. Then I have about 900 MB to delete.
Thanks for your comments, both photos are different, and as soon as I open a file, I save it as a PSD, and do anything I think is needed. I never did anything other than open both JPG photos in ACDsee Photo Manager 10, Cropped them, resized them, saved as PSD for printing, then resized them with one side 800 px., then saved them as JPG's. Was surprised to see the low kb size. Have always used CS3, Save as WEB, and ACDSee blew me away. I usually just use ACDsee because it's crop has a thirds grid.
Love your photos, and the gradient is one of my favouites. I like adventurous people.
Gus
BTW: Do folks ever post digial Oil paintings, Watercolours etc?
I like the second image better and eye is AOK as well. The bright blue is an attention grabber and can be cloned out.
If you are shooting both, try moving to a RAW workflow. Adobe Camera RAW in Version 4.3 is very refined and easy to work with. A RAW workflow will give you you the best image quality.
I learn by my mistakes and your lesson on overmanipulation was right on the money. It was an eye opener that I have taken to heart . . ., and makes me think while I'm setting up for a photo, like when I changed position for background on the Thrasher. The old adfage ~ "Think, there must be a better way" along with "Simplicity is akin to elegance."
Nobody liked the black stipe on #1, so I had to relent and take him to CS3 on parole and attempted to remove the black mark on him. Did it wash out OK?
BTW: I had my personal best in Scrabble with my wife tonight "365"
Lucky Swede . .
Gustaf
Last edited by Gus Hallgren; 02-11-2008 at 01:16 AM.
Congrats on the Scrabble Gus. Nice BT and love the perch, like the BG in this one better especially with the black line removed. I think blending the line from the dark to the light right above the birds head would help?
Going out on a big limb here. What I often do when faced with the above is use the clone tool, large soft brush on opacity of say 30-33% to blend colors. Tried it with QM and that works even better. I'm sure there is a proper way of doing it:)
Gus, this is a beauty...and a species that I need to photograph! Your attempts to cover the black stripe are getting much closer, but I agree with Nonda that the last version still has a fairly sharp transition between the green and "white" colors. I'd set my clone brush on a very diffuse setting (10-15%) and a big brush size and use continue to blend. Such a beautiful image here!
Curve-billed Thrasher on Guard
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